(finally) Two reflective encapsulations of 2017:
reflective encapsulation #1
My life (in very real, concrete, unforced fashion) fulfilled these words of Jesus more than I ever imagined happening to me:
From Luke 14 (NASB)
26 “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. 27 Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.”
From Matthew 10 (NLT)
37 “If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine; or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of being mine.”
Burned in my mind are pictures throughout 2017 of my wife, two sons, and three daughters, each in their own age-appropriate way, raging in broken tears over the wreckage brought to seven lives in the pursuit of saving one.
My own most recent breakdown was last Sunday. I lay on the dining room floor crying over how much I’ve missed in Enoch’s life. He graduates this year!
Jesus? HOW do you love Everett (or me, for that matter) ALL the time? I don’t understand…
I never intended for my family to be sacrificed this much on the altar of responding to the Kingdom’s call.
Yet I would accept it again. Because this seismic change, though completely God’s idea, was not brought about at the point of a gun. We have a love relationship; He knew he didn’t have to.
Of course, I would rather have been spared this cup, this way. But our rock is this: out of Wreck, we know, comes Redemption of many kinds. And God is writing a story bigger than the part we can see right now.
And great news is coming (verse 39):
“If you give up your life for me, you will find it.”
It’s in the low times that all I see is that awful future tense.
Kyrie eleison.
reflective encapsulation #2
His eye is on the sparrow, and I KNOW he watches me.
I opened 2017 unemployed and found work at a hardware store three months in. So, for nine months last year I worked full time at $15/hr and brought home $20,000. Anyone knows that a family of eight (even without three ravenous teens) cannot live in city America on $20,000 per annum.
Yet here we are. And that’s without food stamps, WIC, Medicaid, or State help of any kind (not that we wouldn’t, we just haven’t) except free lunches at the kids’ schools.
So exactly how much gift money did we get? I ran a report to see.
Oddness of all oddnesses, “Gift Money for 2017” also totaled exactly $20,000.
From dozens of people. Some extremely unexpected. Money just kept showing up, and basically (other than that little summer GoFundMe) without us doing any asking.
Amazing.
However, even $40,000 isn’t quite a livable salary for a family of our size, and we had to eliminate all optionals and many other expenses that you (and usually we) would consider budget essentials. Instead, we were buoyed by grocery store gift cards, scholarships for the girls’ dance, gifted city-league soccer, free babysitting, free gas, free turkeys, many treats to cups of coffee, discounted work on our roof, discounted work on the house painting, free machines, free work on machines, money for airplane tickets, my motorcycle!, free bags of clothes, Christmas gifts from church and school, on and on. It was still never enough, yet somehow there was enough.
I’ve never been through anything like it. It would be fine with me if it never happened again.
But whatever the future may hold, 2017 will forever be The Year of the Lord’s Provision.